


the shape of silence

by picklebridge



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Family Bonding, Family Fluff, First time Parent, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hint of Angst, baby's first time in the snow, just a dad and his green son, post-episode: s01e08 the redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28250793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picklebridge/pseuds/picklebridge
Summary: As he lowers the ship into atmo and starts scanning the frozen ground for signs of civilization, Din reaches down to gently worry one of the baby’s ears between his fingers, sighing heavily to himself. The child weighs next to nothing, but he feels every ounce of the small body curled into his.-Or: After their confrontation with Moff Gideon on Nevarro, Din doesn't know where to start looking for the Jedi. A chance fuel stop on a remote planet offers a moment of respite and some new experiences.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 11
Kudos: 186
Collections: Star Wars Secret Santa 2020





	the shape of silence

**Author's Note:**

> this was a gift for @hobiiwan as part of the secret santa 2020 gift exchange over on tumblr! i hope anyone reading this has a lovely holiday period and a good end to the year, considering it has been such a shitty one.

It’s too quiet. There’s the rumbling of the engine of course, the ever-present beat of the Crest’s mechanical heart, but apart from that…there is nothing. The deafening quiet of space lingers on the edge of his mind, like a predator hovering just out of sight. It sounds like it always does, after the bounty has been brought on board and sealed in carbonite, when Din is left exactly how he likes things. Alone, with his own thoughts.

Except this time, he isn’t. Silence, it turns out, can be very deceptive.

There is a clank somewhere deep in the hold and Din jumps, tripping over the corner of a storage crate and dropping the tarp he’d been trying to look under.

“Come on, kid…” he mutters, running a flustered hand over the top of his helmet. “Don’t do this to me.”

Something else rattles, ringing sharply through the durasteel. Somewhere in the gloom a little satisfied giggle echoes, a funny trilling sound that makes him smile through the sharp exasperation in his chest. Din sighs, slumping against the crate.

“I know you’re in there,” he tells the selection of equipment around him. There is no answer, but the silence feels bated, interested. Like someone is listening. “You’ve got to come out sooner or later.”

There is another giggle and the sound of many small things tinkling as they fall. Din groans and tips his head back.

“Anything you spill, you clean up on this ship,” he says, trying to be threatening, but even he can hear the defeat in his own voice. When there is more suspiciously long silence, he sighs again and crouches, lifting up the edge of the tarp and turning his heat sensors back on. Cold blue shapes swim muzzily on the HUD, and he’s just about to give up again and move on when a patch of orange flashes by. The little womp rat is back here all right, just as he suspected. A little bloom of relief spreads headily through him, but it’s not enough to dull the panic that has plagued him for the past several hours, from the moment he turned around in the pilot’s chair and realised the kid had vanished. 

The orange blur solidifies into a dense blob of red as the child comes out from behind more of the junk that Din has accumulated on jobs. Odds and ends mostly, things bounties had with them when they were taken and he’d kept because they’d looked useful. Boxes of scrap so that he can put the Crest back together when it is inevitably damaged. Stuff one absolutely would not want a small, overly curious infant to have full unrestrained access to. Din has seen the kid put a live frog into his mouth, so his opinion of the little gremlin’s judgement is not especially high. He keeps meaning to clear up, but he has yet to figure out how to baby proof a ship when the baby in question can move things with his mind.

The Razor Crest is not a big ship, but Din has quickly learned that that is very much a matter of perspective. He’d buckle the kid down if he thought it would work, but those little fingers are fast; he figured out the controls on his sleeping pod almost before Din did. The fact of the matter is that the child does not get put anywhere. He will tolerate being placed, if Din is lucky. Today he wasn’t.

The patch of glowing red shifts as Din watches. The child stoops, one small clawed hand reaching out to paw at the ground.

“I can see you, kid.” The red blob straightens, and then the shape of two large ears rotate in his direction. “Yeah, that’s right. We’re landing soon, get out here.”

There is a questioning chirp, and then the child is moving, emerging from the gloom. Din flicks off the heat sensors and looks down into a pair of large brown eyes as a body shuffles up to his leg and latches on to the fabric of his trousers with one hand. The other is closed tight, but Din catches a glint of silver through his fingers.

“Hey, what have you got there?” He plucks the kid up by the back of his robe and tucks him into the crook of one arm, then holds his free hand in front of his face, palm up. “Come on, hand it over.”

The kid makes no verbal response, but his ears flick down once, a dismissal if Din has ever seen one.

“I’m not negotiating,” Din says sternly, but it’s all a lie. He’s already starting to sweat a little at the look the kid gives him.

The child’s ears flicker again before he looks impassively out across the hold, hand held protectively against his midriff. Din keeps up the stalemate for a few moments, then hears something beep urgently in the cockpit. He sighs.

“Look, you give me whatever that is and I feed you. Sound good?”

This makes the child look up almost instantly, shifting in Din’s arms with a soft eager crowing noise. His hand twitches, and Din holds his breath. Then the cockpit beeps again and Din curses, half turning back towards the ladder. The kid has started making innocent burbling noises and is sitting placidly in Din’s arms, as if he hasn’t just dragged a seasoned bounty hunter on a several hour goose chase through the hull.

“I’ll double the jerky,” he pleads, patting the pouch on his belt for emphasis. “Come on kid, work with me here.”

The child grins. His little hand comes up and releases a collection of knuts and wire ends into Din’s palm, which he stows quickly into a pocket. He knows that he lost this round, but he’ll take whatever he can get at this point, so long keeps the kid alive and relatively out of trouble.

They get back into the cockpit just in time for the Crest to drop out of hyperspace, a shuddering rumble and then a familiar lurch sending him scrambling for the controls. There is a breathless, weightless moment as the sweeping dome of a planet materialises below, blotting out the stars. Din studies it quickly. Swirling grey clouds roiling within atmo, and where they break, mottled landscapes of white and green. He checks the navi-computer again for its name: Ayarth 4, cold, settled by mining colonies, covered in forest. Remote enough that not even Din knows it, because bounties clearly don’t stray here often. Perfect, in other words, for anyone that wants to lay low for a while.

As he sits in the pilot’s seat and sets the controls back to manual, Din feels a slight tugging on his boots and glances down to find the kid scaling his leg. He huffs out a laugh and moves his thigh so the womp rat can get a better grip, then can’t help the smile that spreads across his face when the kid drags himself into his lap and promptly sprawls, huffing as he draws his feet up under his robe out of the cold.

“You actually gonna take a nap, huh?” he asks, by now starting to recognise the sleepy droop to the child’s big brown eyes. It never happens when he hopes it will, but right now suits him just fine. The kid doesn’t say anything, but he curls his hand over the lip of Din’s thigh guard and rests his head on the exposed fabric, which seems answer enough.

As he lowers the ship into atmo and starts scanning the frozen ground for signs of civilization, Din reaches down to gently worry one of the baby’s ears between his fingers, sighing heavily to himself. The child weighs next to nothing, but he feels every ounce of the small body curled into his. 

The silence presses back in, interrupted this time by the roaring wind outside and the whining groan of the engines, but Din feels it all the same. He’s never minded quiet; when they were young Paz had always been the talker when necessary, happy to utilise the attention his size bestowed upon him so naturally. Din has always preferred to watch. He can read a person’s body, know exactly how they will move next in a fight, but words have too many faces.

Now though...now the silence feels too empty. He knows the deep abyss of space intimately - the feeling of great nothingness and infinite possibility stretching out in front of him. Has welcomed it, even. But there has always been something to go back to, in the past. A tether binding him to the rest of the galaxy throughout the solitary weeks and months drifting through stars. Now though, the covert is gone. They might reassemble, in time, but he has no way to find them even if they do, and so many will be gone. He has his mission, and that alone has kept him going through the two lonely weeks since Nevarro, the image of those piles of empty beskar seared into his mind. 

He’s self aware enough to know that he’s running, though. Panicking, almost. When they left, he was just trying to put as much distance between himself and the planet below in case of any straggling imperials that might try to follow their trail. Now they’re just drifting between fuel stations as he tries to fit his head around finding a people he has never heard of, let alone seen. A ‘race of enemy sorcerers’ no less...all he has to work with is a name, Jedi, and the way the kid’s ears perk up when he says it. He’s good at tracking people, good at chasing them to the far reaches of the galaxy and dragging them back to wherever they belong. But this feels like catching smoke. 

The kid snuffles in his sleep and his ears twitch as debris thumps against the hull. Din watches his eyelids flicker as he dreams and sighs, directing the Crest down towards a clearing. It’s maybe a mile away from where he can see lights and dwellings nestled among the trees. Far enough away to be discrete, close enough that they can run if he needs.

Dusk is falling when he lands, casting long blue shadows against the white ground. The sky, fractured and fragmented by trees, is bleeding purple and orange from a blood red sun. As the Crest settles the snow hisses, steam billowing up around the hot engines and drifting across the windshield. The baby stirs, blinking sleepily up at Din as he runs cool down checks and flips the safety switches, locking out his codes and setting everything to standby.

“Sorry, kid,” he murmurs, settling one hand at the back of his head. It’s too much to hope that he will go back to sleep. Already his ears are pricking, his head swivelling to focus on the little of the landscape visible through the transparisteel. Din thinks that his eyes are distant sometimes - not absent, but focusing on things that he cannot see. Going beyond. It wouldn’t surprise him if the baby’s strange powers allowed him to see through walls. He can already lift beasts, strangle people and heal them with his mind - what’s one more impossible thing?

Din lifts the child off his lap and sets him in his pod, leaving him to wake up more fully as he heads back into the hold and opens the weapons cache, gearing up in quick, practised motions. The new weight of the jetpack on his shoulders is still a thrill. His last blessing from Armourer. An affirmation that this is the right path, wherever it leads.

As he slings his rifle over his shoulder there is a little chirp. He looks down in time to see the kid’s pod bump gently into the open cache door; the child has his eyes closed and brow furrowed in concentration, his hand raised. Din looks at his gauntlet and sees a little red light blinking on the pod control panel, one that he definitely did not switch on, and sighs, feeling his heart sink. 

“Very clever, kid,” he says, even as he resigns himself to never being able to find the child again. “I take it that means you’re ready to go?” 

The kid chirps again, giving him a toothy grin that falters into open amazement as the ramp hisses and lowers, revealing a world of muffled, glittering white. Snow has started falling again, a breaker of clouds rolling in to chase out the sunset and bringing the weather change with it. Din stops to wedge a spare scrap of fabric into the pod, looking critically at the child’s ears. He usually keeps the scraps on hand to clean his blasters, but they’ll do for this purpose too. 

The kid makes a funny crowing noise, reaching towards all that white, and tilts his head up at Din in silent demand.

“You’ve never seen snow before, huh? It’s cold, so keep that on. And let me know if your ears hurt.” He steps forward and fiddles with the pod controls so that that baby will stay level with him. “Best way to explain it is just to get out there. Come on.”

He finds himself almost excited as he steps out from under the metal plates of the Crest’s belly, keeping half an eye on the kid as he scans their surroundings for any hidden threat. The kid’s mouth opens in toothy delight, his brown eyes going big and dark and intense as he stares up into the darkening sky and the maze of swirling white. His little breaths puff up into the air and he reaches for it, babbling when it slides through his fingers and dissipates into the dusk. 

Then, his ears twitch, a quick reflexive motion. The kid turns to look behind him, then makes a disgruntled noise when there’s nothing there. His head tilts as he turns back to this new, interesting landscape, then his ears twitch again, flapping in a manner reminiscent of a sneeze. Din feels a smile creep onto his face as a large snowflake lands on the curve of the baby’s left ear, waiting with bated breath. He can’t stop the laugh ripping out of his throat when sure enough, the ears twitch again.

The kid whines, reaching up to cover his ears with his claws.

“It’s just the snow. It’s like rain, see?” Din says, still chuckling. He lets several flakes settle onto the back of one glove and holds it in front of the kid’s face, watching those clever little eyes latch onto the melting spots of white. The child reaches out to touch and makes a noise of consternation when the snow vanishes, bringing his hand to his mouth. “Yeah you got it, kid. It’s just water.” 

He turns back to the Crest and makes sure the ramp retracts, listening for the tell-tale triple click that means the lock has engaged. Mining communities tend to be insular, but not unpleasant. Not scavengers. He doubts there will be any trouble, but then, he thought that the kid would be a regular job, if high stakes He’s quite done with surprises.

His breath bounces around the inside of his helmet, his boots creaking as they break through the frozen shell of the snow. It’s been a long time since he saw a view like this, even longer since he got to enjoy it.

“I say we head into the settlement and see if we can get some food. What do you think?” He says, turning back to the kid. He’s in time to see his closed eyes, to hear a coo of deep concentration - but what really gets his attention is the small wall of snow shooting towards the child’s outstretched hand.

“No, kid - wait!”

It’s too late. The force of the incoming snow sends the pod skittering, the child within flying backwards with a squeal as he is painted head to toe in white. He shakes his head like a dog, ears springing free of the snow. It’s the most disgruntled Din has ever seen him. 

“Bet you’re not gonna do that again, huh?” he chuckles, righting the pod and sweeping out the worst of the mess. 

The kid just holds his arms out, ears drooping as a lump of snow slides off the tip of his nose. Din huffs out a laugh and picks him up, tucking him under one arm and fishing out the blanket to drape over his legs. 

“When we come back later I’ll show you how to make snowballs. You had the right idea, but we’ve gotta work on your technique.” The kid huffs. “You’ve got to admit it was a little bit funny. Now, how about that food?”

The kid coos and settles his weight down, ears lifting as they set off through the trees. Din hones in on the distant flashes of strung up lights and squat houses, a warm orange glow fracturing off the ice. The child curls into the crook of his arm, now content to watch this new world unveil itself instead of bringing it to him, his face scrunching with every breath of wind. As they walk, he winds one small hand around Din’s thumb, his fingers worrying at the smooth orange leather.

Silence falls again, amplified by the way snow muffles everything, suspending them in a long unblemished moment. 

But this time, with the kid in his arms and the path stretching out in front of them, Din’s mind settles, crystallizing around the most important truth. 

Wherever it may take him, this is exactly where he’s meant to be.


End file.
